Conventional Wisdom

by Steve Dempsey

You've been running Ars Magica for your friends for 12 years.
The campaign features political intrigue, demonic contracts, three
generations of mages, the Inquisition and a shady eastern mystical
society. The PCs, with a depth of personality to rival Shakespeare,
have histories that criss-cross the stories of the major NPC
families. Not to mention all the personal sacrifices they've made
to conjure powerful magic items simply coruscating with kabalistic
energies.

You have been there and done that, got the T-shirt, ate the
pie.

You take the epitome of your GM writing craft, a sort of Hamlet
crossed with the Lord of the Rings, condensed into four hours play.
You then get stuck with two newbies, one of whom is 12 and
pathologically shy and two Ars Magica old hands who know the system
inside out. The final two players are slumming it from Living
Greyhawk having turned up late and found only your game has places
remaining...

Within half an hour, the Heroic Fantasy merchants have exchanged
the souls of the newbie PCs with some archfiend of the 7th circle
of Hell for 21/2 tons of Vim and an audience with Pope Joan in her
jacuzzi. The two old hands have started to research a spell that
will reduce the callousing effect of turning the pages of spell
books by 1d10 per 2,300 pages and the newbies have started talking
about Cleopatra 2525.

Nobody has picked up your witty reference to Pico della
Mirandola nor sussed that the murders follow an inverted tarot
cross pattern. The plot is in shreds as are your nerves.

What has gone wrong?

How could the players be so terrible? Why couldn't they see what
a sorry mess they have made of everything? The problem, you decide,
with cons is that you just have no guarantee of quality. Quite
frankly you expected better and you swear never to run a game at
Barbiecon again.

In fact, if there is anyone at fault here, it's you. You have
forgotten that Cons and Campaigns are very different kettles of
fish. They are about as close as the Brothers Karamazov is to Star
Wars (remember that for later).

But fear not, here is my 7 point plan for convention games:

There are generally two kinds of convention game. There are
those written as an introduction to the game system. These
typically get you a free copy of the lite rules as an inducement to
buy the final product as and when it comes out.

And then there are the rest. The only real difference between
good games of both sorts is that one has a bribe attached.

That's right, decent Con games are introductory games for
beginners.

You might think that this is an oversimplification and that you
do get good players at Cons. I won't dispute the presence of
experienced players but you are never guaranteed to get them in
your game. This leads to the first rule:

Unless you have managed to prebook the Bunnies &
Shoggoths roleplaying demonstration team, write a game that
beginners can play.

A beginners' game does not mean a
simple game. The idea is to introduce the players to the game. This
means writing something that shows up its various key aspects.

The first key aspect of the game is the background. If you are
playing Pendragon, then make all the players knights. Yes, even the
women. Pendragon is primarily about derring-do on horse back,
romantic encounters with Ladies and undoing the foul machinations
of the evil enemies of Arthur, King of the Britons. Keep the
"Everyone's a Squire" or "Wart's Chipmunk Buddies" for your home
game. This is rule 2.

Go to the essence of the game's
background.

Now you're cooking. The second key aspect is the player
characters. There are several dangers with PCs. One is an
overburdened character sheet, covered with acronyms, strange
symbols and references to obscure rules. This is rule 3.

Write the character sheet in English

Even if you think your Vampire sheet is self-explanatory put in
a short paragraph on what the character actually is and how that
relates to the rest of the game. I can never remember what Ventrue
do anyway so a reminder is good. Keep all the blobby things,
obviously, but go that extra inch in making the game easy to
play.

The other PC faux pas is to overdo the design, A Verbena witch
masquerading as a Black Spiral Dancer with a Wraith guardian and a
Pooka familiar might seem the obvious choice for your scenario but
... I've got no idea what I'm talking about. Lower power levels are
much easier to manage at a Con.

Keep It Simple, Stupid! And avoid cliché
like the plague.

Oh, no! Two PCs are secretly in love again. Yawn. Well, fair
enough for Manga where that is a staple, an example of Rule 1, not
cliché. But in 3e? There is no real place for star-crossed
lovers in Conan. Have the hero's betrothed eaten by pygmy cannibals
by all means but don't have romantic trysts in the arbour.

The background is set, the players have read and understood
their sheets. It's now time for lights, camera and action. And I
mean ACTION! Give the players something to do. There are never
going to see what the game is about if they spend half the scenario
debating the price of their room with the landlord.

This happened in my last Dying Earth game and really it didn't
start out that well. It wasn't until things started to happen that
the new players actually managed to get involved.

Remember that example way back in the introduction? At this
point you should be thinking cinema not literature. We don't really
care if 'reader, you married him', we want a dripping wet Darcy
charging across the croquet lawn on his horse to pull fair Emma
from the lake. A play on manners is hard enough to manage with you
regular crew so don't expect miracles from complete, and sometimes
antagonistic, strangers. Here's rule 5:

ACTION! Make things happen!

With this in mind, think about rules. Allow the players to
engage gradually with them. Don't start with a decking battle in
Shadowrun, start with a simple street transaction or a sneak roll.
Even for experienced players there are bound to be idiosyncrasies
in the way you run the game. To avoid the situation where confused
players are reduced to quoting rules at you, make it clear from the
start how you run the game. Not only will it show who is in charge
but it will settle the nerves of those who do and those who don't
know the game.

Start with simple rules examples and build up to the
more difficult, if you must.

Finally we come to the last rule. Even if you have aced the
rest, if you fail this an hour into the game tumbleweeds will start
to roll across the table and vultures perch on the GM screen. The
only thing left to remind you that the game was once alive is the
stink.

Unfortunately this is also the hardest lesson to learn.

The two armies face each other across the plains. One is flesh
and blood, the other robotic, unfeeling and deadly. A heroic
sacrifice is about to be made. Then some f**kwit has the bright
idea to raise the mood by having a clown prat fall around in the
foreground. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas.

Don't do that. Just don't.

By all means have comic interludes in your games, but don't let
them ruin moments of high drama. Don't let them take away the sense
of danger and excitement. Here is rule 7.

Build the tension.

This is the hardest rule because you have to do three things at
once. You need to rely on your skill as a writer to produce a
moment of real danger. The best way to do this is to offer the PCs
a moral dilemma. Should they save the Princess or the Kingdom? What
if they do get the alien eggs for Weyland-Yutani? At least the
colonists will live. Give them a hard choice, one where somebody
has to get hurt.

You then have to deliver the dramatic instant in such a way that
it creates the right mood. Get the NPCs to argue for both sides,
convincingly. Push the players for time. The decision needs to be
made now. Don't give them time to think or to consider all the
consequences of their actions.

Then, if you're a real bastard, take the worst case scenario
that the players thought could not possibly happen. The one they
have just been dismissing as so unlikely. Quickly invent a
rational, and hit them with it.

Finally you have to manage the players so that they are not
allowed to spoil it.

Because they will.

They'll quote inanely from Aliens or Ghostbusters during a death
scene. They'll talk numbers instead of actions: "327 HP damage,
gross!" instead of "I pierce the beast's black heart with my
father's rapier". They'll goof off to get drinks. They'll even
start to talk about Cleopatra 2525 as if it could possibly, ever,
be better than your game!

If you keep the tension high enough though, they won't worry
about such things. They'll be far to busy enjoying themselves. At
Cons, where the game is new to many, where the surroundings are
often less than ideal, you need to keep the players focussed on the
important. Dramatic Tension will do that for you.

In a previous
article, J.S. Majer claimed that roleplaying was just "mastery
of specific technique, plus a sense of composition". Here I hope I
have covered some of the techniques and touched on the composition
of a good Convention scenario.

This article is dedicated to the RPGA who, with a few rare
exceptions, wouldn't know a good scenario if it bit them on the
ass.